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Bulgarian-born artist Dimitar Krustrev is considered a classical realist” a portraitist in the tradition of the European old masters”. In the late 20th century, while other U.S. artists and émigrés like Krustev turned inward, exploring their own psyche, Dimitar’s artistic explorations took a very different turn. As an art teacher in Iowa, Krustev was well-known for leading students through the museums of Europe, but his artistic vision was never constrained by the tra-ditions of the old world, nor even by those of the mid-America. Dimitar’s portraiture was of people seldom seen outside the pages of anthropological texts. His travels took him far off the well-trod tourist trail and far from the safety of places with museums and res-taurants. The subjects that interested him being the people who live in the dwindling unknown places of the world. Krustev traveledusually with only an assistant and a few guidesto the jungles of Mexico, Central and South America and later in Africa. Neither an anthropologist nor a biologist, the Journals of Dimitar Krustev are a unique contribution to both fields. This first installment recounts a journey to the land of the Lacandón Mayans, just as their culture was being rapidly undermined through well-intentioned intervene-tion by the so-called experts” of the time. Dimitar knew the Lacandón as individuals, not as objects for study or problems to be solved. In reading this short journal we learn more about the daily lives of the Lacandón than by reading through the statistics and linguistics of more scholarly studies. And we come to see Kin Yuk and his family as Dimitar did people worthy of portraits in a style once reserved for the kings and magnates of the old world.